Bilaterals: Bad for Business

By

Kyle Wingfield

Updated April 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

BRUSSELS -- First there was the spaghetti bowl. Now, meet the electron collider.

Trade negotiations can be hopelessly arcane, with their talk of NAMA, amber boxes, green boxes, blue boxes, Swiss coefficients and the like. So colorful metaphors are always welcome in describing the effects of trade deals to the public. The "spaghetti bowl" is how Columbia University's Jagdish Bhagwati describes the glut of bilateral trade deals world-wide that businesses find difficult to untangle. Now, Patrick Messerlin of...